Strange Little Girls
by Charmisjess
Summary: Spotlight stories focusing on the underrated lovelies of the SWs universe: the Jedi women. First up is Bant Eerin from JA, finally facing off with her demons.


This is a series of short stories giving a little limelight to the forgotten lovelies of the Star Wars world: the Jedi women. I've been having a lot of trouble writing my Qui-Gon and Dooku lately, and it's nice to have a break. I'm so tired of boys. Sometimes you just have to go back to the estrogen.

Anyway, Tori Amos lyric/song theme. All lyrics are hers. Star Wars belongs to Lucas. Bant to Jude Watson. Enjoy:)

Bant's POV.

-o-

_I guess I'm an underwater thing so I__  
__Guess I can't take it personally__  
__I guess I'm an underwater thing__  
__I'm liquid running__  
__There's a sea secret in me__  
__It's plain to see it is rising_

-o-

At night the long halls of the Jedi Temple are lit with blue, just like an aquarium, just for me.

All I am anymore is blue and underwater.

I only move in the night now, when the air feels cooler, and there are less of the glittering eyes to watch me. Deep into the blue corridors I go, retracing the steps I crept so hopefully as a girl, remembering back when things _were._

I do not carry a lightsaber anymore, as I no longer carry a Padawan. I am neither warrior, nor teacher. Master Fisto keeps my weapon on his hip, just behind his own, and some days I think that it is his heaviest burden.

"Bant," he said to me, three months after Geonosis in his gentlest of voices, barely a whisper. "Maybe I should keep your lightsaber for you. Just for now, Padawan. Just until you're feeling better."

He says that like he truly believes I will start to feel better at some point, like the fact that I was unable to keep my new Padawan alive in the arena will cease to matter, soon enough.

I am told that I am mad, because it still matters to me, years later.

I think it's silly that he thinks I would use a lightsaber to harm myself. No, it would be an underwater thing. It would be as all those years ago, how Xanatos tried to kill me. Drowned Mon Calamarian. Sitting on the bottom of the lake, counting to find my limit.

I know that he never means to give it back. I realize now that even Jedi Masters don't always tell the truth. _Especially_ Jedi Masters. It's all right, Kit, I didn't want my blade anymore, anyway. I am not a warrior; I am a ghost.

I miss Obi-Wan most of all.

We have a system, he and I. We have a place, just behind a waterfall in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. A rock room, where he leaves me wonderful letters on everything: his missions, his failings, his Padawan. He asks how I am. He asks to see me.

Sometimes I know that he watches that place, waiting in hope of seeing me come to leave my own gifts. I never let him see me. I don't know why he would ever even want to; I will never understand the human species fascination with staring at the dead and dying. I didn't look at Master Tahl's body even once; Qui-Gon practically drank her with his eyes.

Obi-Wan and I both know that I am certainly dying.

I have a great many conversations with Master Tahl, even now. Especially now. She comes to me in the evening, in that dusky hour when the Coruscant sunset hits the garden's lake, and both the sky and water are splashed with red. Tahl looks glamorous in the red. She swims with me every evening now, and I ask her all of the things that I was too shy to say when it mattered.

She's so pretty in that human way, rich and colorful. I never expected death to stop her, so I was more relieved than shocked when she started showing up again. Tahl was always that way, always beautiful, clever, funny, and tragic. Her life was so brimming, and I never truly fit into it.

Sometimes, I hate her. I can still remember the way the air burned on New Apsolon, when Obi-Wan and I talked about what had happened between our Masters. I had told him their love was the saddest thing of all then, in my meek, miserable way. Now I tell Tahl what I really think.

"You were selfish," I cry, into the red water. "Both you and Qui-Gon!"

She just laughs, like she understands, and is a little bit sorry. We both know it. She shouldn't have taken me if she didn't want me. Qui-Gon shouldn't have been a Jedi, if he wanted to be in love. They had to tempt Fate, and Fate punished them for their sin by taking my Master's life.

My selfish, beautiful Master.

I tell Master Fisto about these underwater visits with Master Tahl, and he simply looks at me, with those black, fathomless Nautiloid eyes. I am a flash of slip-shape silver in his gaze.

Poor Master Fisto.

Things would have gone so much better if I had simply started as his Padawan, instead of Tahl's. Kit's so warm, and bright, and wriggling in the Force, so eager to love, and be loved, but never in the wrong way. Never like my scarlet Tahl. If I had been only his Padawan, I might have never felt that first break.

In the end, it was Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon encouraged Tahl to take me as her Padawan, even if she didn't really want to. (I _wanted_ my Padawan.) Qui-Gon thought he knew everything.

This is really all Qui-Gon's fault.

Sometimes I ask Tahl about how he is, and she smiles, as if to say 'you'll see.' As if the joke is on the Force, and Qui-Gon Jinn, who couldn't protect her, has something wonderful planned to fix everything. Talk his fatal Master back to our side. Undo the war. Qui-Gon, who I never forgave for taking Obi-Wan away, for besmirching Tahl's memory with his dark melodrama, and of course, for what he did to Obi-Wan in his own death-play.

Sometimes, like Tahl, I hate Qui-Gon as much as I miss him.

Tonight in our secret place, I leave a strange bluish rock I found in one of my dives for Obi-Wan. It's always a little something, a drawing, or a woven band of grass. I would write him a letter, but what would I say? _Dear Obi-Wan, today I went swimming…___

Tonight, a hurricane is brewing on Coruscant. We underwater things can always feel it. Obi-Wan's hateful Padawan goes again to the Chancellor, and Mace Windu is billowing in the Force. My Master Kit smells like fate tonight. Things are starting to sink.

I have never learnt to let go of the death feeling. I can smell it anywhere. Tonight, I will hide from it, in my gentle element.

Underneath, it is quiet and safe. The lake greets me, feeling smooth and soft, thicker and richer somehow, than usual. Over-stirred, warm cream. I slip inside of it without making a splash, and drift to the bottom.

I begin to count.

-o- end -o-

_Next up, Jocasta Nu!_


End file.
